whom is a perishing sinner and an immortal soul; each of whom has his full share of hopes and fears, sins and sorrows; for each of whom God has sent His Son to die; for whom that Son lived a life of sorrow, and died a death of shame; and for each of whom He has gone to prepare a place amidst the many mansions of the Father's house. Think of it, you who preach up retrenchment. Ponder upon it, you who are at ease in Zion. Take a bird's-eye view of the awful fact, that to-day a thousand millions of your own kith and kin, as precious to the loving heart of Almighty God as you yourselves are, are living, loving, dying, ignorant of the love of God and of the preciousness of Christ, uncomforted amidst the sorrows of life with the bright and blessed hope of heaven. Let the appalling thought crush you to your knees in an agony of prayer, and wring from your inmost soul the earnest cry, "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"

I have spoken of the inumerable multitude still living in heathenism. Now let us look for a moment at what is being done for them. As near as I can gather from carefully compiled statistics, there is but one missionary to every seven hundred thousand (700,000) heathen scattered throughout the world. There is but one missionary station to every four hundred and fifty thousand (450,000), and but one convert in every seven hundred (700). The whole of the British Missionary Societies subscribe a little over one million (£1,000,000) per year, or, and I would have you mark the figures, about one pound per year for every thousand heathen. And yet there are some who are loudly preaching retrenchment, and, it should be also added, practising it. If our Missionary Committee must face the inevitable, where shall they begin? Shall they forsake the little group of 200, who have been gathered in from the 400, millions of China? Shall they forsake the little handful of first fruits that has been gathered in in Eastern Africa, and turn their backs upon a spot made sacred to us by the dust of Edmund Butterworth and Rebecca Wakefield, and Charles New and John Martin ? Shall they forsake our coloured brethren in poor desolate Jamaica, and on the deadly shores of Western Africa, and at the time when they are so nobly endeavouring to help themselves? Shall we forsake our own English brothers, who have left our crowded shores for the distant colonies in search of honest bread? God forbid, and let all the people cry Amen. Let us retrench our luxuries, our savings, our pleasures, our needs; but never retrench our missions, until we have solved the terrible problem; until every man has been brought to a saving knowledge of the grace of God; until "all the ends of the world shall remember, and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Him." WILLIAM YATES.

CURRENT LITERATURE.

IN

'N our early days, when preparing to sound the Gospel trumpet, we a read with much profit Dialogues on Pulpit Preparation, between a Senior and a Junior Minister; with Sketches of Sermons. By Rev. GEORGE CUBITT. The fourth edition is now before us. (London: Wesleyan Conference Office.) Nothing more solid, more useful, have we yet seen. In the Dialogues there is the following:-" Junior: From what you have said, I should conjecture that you would scarcely approve of those phrases which represent the ministry as a profession, differing from other professions only in reference to the subjects about which it is exercised? Senior: I would never be captious about mere expressions, where the truth was not endangered; and undoubtedly it is possible to give a harmless meaning to the phrases to which you refer. As the word is used to denote a class of employments neither mechanical, trading, nor commercial, but one in which the mind is chiefly concerned, it may be applied without any direct impropriety to the engagements of the ministry, which are as purely mental as those of either medicine or jurisprudence. But having said this much, I am bound to add that one inconvenience (to use the lightest word) follows this application of the phrase; and that this is of such a serious character, that, at all events, as the use of it is not necessary, and may be prejudicial, it were far better avoided. The inconvenience is this: other professions are of merely human origin; this is of divine appointment. In the others, men may engage with the usual objects by which they are influenced in fixing upon any employment-trading, mechanical, commercial, professional; in this, the originating call must be from God, and the objects sought, those exclusively for securing which the ministry itself was instituted. Bring back your thoughts to the origin of the ministry" (pp. 13, 14). Some of the works recommended to the junior minister are now out of date. For instance, "Hartwell Horne's Introduction," most valuable in its day, is superseded by a much smaller work, “The Bible Handbook," by Dr. Angus. Watts's "Logic," and his "Treatise on the Improvement of the Mind," will hardly do now. Whately condemned them long ago, but we think too severely. Blair's "Lectures," and Campbell on "The Philosophy of Rhetoric," we should not advise a young minister to devote considerable time to them, though we do not belong to those who treat them with something like contempt. We agree with the author that Taylor's" Elements of Thought" is a good book; the reading of it might, with benefit, be followed by the study of Dr. Payne's little known, but original and profound, “Elements of Mental and Moral

Science." But we must curb ourself, or we shall get into a long line of observations on books that may be called ministerial aids. Mr. Cubitt's "Sketches" are sufficiently long to be explicit, and not so long as to be exhaustive. They explain and apply the Word.

Commentary on The Romans. By Dr. GODET. Vol. II.-System of Christian Doctrine. By Dr. DORNER. Vol. II.—The Foreign Theologicaï Library. (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark.) Great in theme and thought, with far-reaching meaning, Dr. Dorner, on the character of Christ, tenderly, beautifully, philosophically remarks:-"What can be conceived more daring, and withal more humble, than the apparent contradiction, that on one side He desires to be King of spirits in a realm of freedom, even as He is in Himself full of a kingly spirit, but desires to become such by giving Himself up a complete sacrifice, allowing sinners to work their will on Him, undergoing thus the death of a transgressor, while not giving up the certainty of the divine force of suffering dying love? In complete self-forgetfulness of love He would educe blessing from the curse, and the curse-deserving life from death. This is a divine conception so sublime, so full of wondrous originality and wisdom, so opposed to every wish and expectation of His disciples, so contrary to all human calculation, and putting it to complete shame, formed in the lonely stillness of His heart alone with God, apart from all fanatical enthusiasm, but carried out in spontaneous obedience to the known will of His Father, with calm energy, patience, and collectedness, that nothing but obtuseness can call in question the uninventibleness, the historic reality of His wondrous character. And this divine folly of self-sacrificing love, how it has proved itself to be divine wisdom, the unveiling of a mystery that contains the power to vanquish hearts, and thus the world, and to unravel all the world's disharmonies! For all strife and discord within us and without us springs only from the spirit that shuns sacrifice, that shows the blessed death of the self-willed, selfish nature. Such love as He displayed is the outflowing of the eternal divine life, the flame. of the divine love itself, which was immortal, inextinguishable, because it knew how to convert even the most hostile element into a stimulus to its own pure energy, so that in contending against hostile powers its fire would only shine the brighter" (pp. 288, 289).

AMONG the many books on our study table, sent for notice, Dr. Bruce's work appears to us to have more than usual merit. The Chief End of Revelation. By ALEXANDER BALMAIN BRUCE, D.D. (London : Hodder & Stoughton.) Some portions of this book were recently delivered as lectures at the Presbyterian College, London. The high

grounds are occupied. The thoughts of the deep thinkers of the day are calmly considered. Mr. Arnold's miracle of the change of a pen into a pen-wiper is not accepted as a fit type of the miracles recorded in Scripture. "The polite irony," says the author, "of this modern Athenian does not touch us at all. For we regard miracles as integral parts of revelation, and not as bare arbitrary signs, like the change of a pen into a pen-wiper. And we know of no miracles of that sort; on the contrary, we regard such prodigies as the kind of miracles which the Jews desired Jesus to work, but which He resolutely refused to work" (p. 172). Speaking of Mr. Arnold's view of Messianic Prophecy as "relegating to the category of poetic invention," the Messianic element," valuable chiefly as showing how deep and strong was the faith of the prophets in the power that worketh for righteousness," the author contends that these prophecies are a "system of ideals, shadowing forth a summum bonum destined to be essentially realised.. genuine oracles uttered by divine inspiration" (p. 232). There are 310 pages of well-reasoned matter.-The Mosaic Era: a Series of Lectures on Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. By JOHN MONRO GIBSON, M.A., D.D. (Same publishers.) The practical brought out of the critical. Dry bones jointed and covered with flesh. While the history is followed in its continuity, much of detail is passed over without remark, and the salient features only dwelt on. Here is a specimen of wise teaching. "It is a great mistake to suppose God singled out Pharaoh, or that He ever singles out anyone, and says, 'I will harden his heart,' and then proceeds to do it. The supposition is monstrous. But the solemn truth is this, that by the operation of that well-known law, according to which the soul becomes less and less susceptible to impressions which have been resisted, God hardens the heart of every man and woman that does not yield to Him. Think how many men have hardened themselves in dishonesty, by first using for a little time a small sum of money not their own, which prepared them by-and-bye for using a larger sum, fully intending to replace it, and so went on, the hardening process going on all the while, till it ended in the most shameless robbery, and brought final ruin and disgrace" (p. 44). 365 pages.-The Class Leader's Treasury and Christian's Directory. By Rev. JOHN BATE. (London: Wesleyan Conference Office.) In a conversation on Church membership, at the beginning of the book, we read: "Dispense with meeting in class as a condition of membership in the Methodist Church, and you at once change her essential characteristics in origin, history, life, and unity. You change her from what she has been and is into something she is not and never has been. You experiment upon her, with a preponderance of probabilities that she will lose her status, life, power, and

that

glory as a Methodist Church." This is a warning voice. The book is large, consisting of 515 octavo pages with copious index. It is a judicious compilation, with considerable matter, very suggestive, from the pen of Mr. Bate. The published price is 7s. 6d. Where classleaders cannot afford this sum, their members might present them with the book. The blessing would come back on the donors. Five copies for £1 may be obtained by our ministers, at our own Book-room, Salisbury-square.-The Doctrines of Annihilation and Universalism. With critical notes and a review of "Salvator Mundi." By Rev. THOMAS WOOD. (Same publishers.) The opposite views are clearly defined, and both of them ably refuted. Mr. Wood holds with the poet,

"A God all mercy is a God unjust."

On the universalist heresy he adopts the words of Dr. Alexander Thomson: "It mutilates God's character; it denies His threatenings; it perverts His promises; it abuses His grace; it gives encouragement to light views of sin and God's anger against it; it dishonours above all the grandeur and the efficiency of the Cross of Christ, for it assigns a more important and wider sphere of action in the salvation of mankind to the sufferings of hell than to the blood of the atonement. It is a masked smiling assassin of unwary souls" (p. 158). In the remarks on "Salvator Mundi," Mr. Cox is rather severely handled, especially in the postscript (p. 203). We can say this without being considered narrow or partial, as we heartily accept the author's views on doctrines. Sensibly is it observed: "We are not aware of a single instance in the teaching of Christ to favour the idea that fundamental moral distinctions would ever be reversed in the other world; but there is very much to show that the same lives are followed, that there is continuity of moral life or existence. Given future life, and distinctions of character would continue in that life; given eternal life, and distinctions of character would be eternal" (p. 193).-The Variorum Edition of the New Testament. (London: G. E. Eyre and W. Spottiswood, Printers to the Queen.) In this edition are collated fifteen ancient and fifty-four modern commentators, six versions (two Latin, two Syriac, and two Egyptian); thirty-three ancient manuscripts, nine critical editions of the text (including Westcott and Hort). As preparing the way, and anticipating some of the alterations which may appear in the new revision, we know nothing superior to this edition.-Sunlight and Shadow; or, Gleanings from My Life Work. By JOHN B. GOUGH. (London: Dickinson, Farringdon-street.) We have already referred to this book, and only need add that the edition before us is attractively got up and in every way complete, and less than half the price of the former. No one